Page 16 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

modernity in public debate and in the media. Conversely, if religion assumes a
marked public role, this is taken to be a sign of the society’s backwardness or
at least the backward orientation of the religious movement in question. This
perspective on the public sphere as a secular space is intrinsic to a modernist
attitude toward society. Such a view was mobilized in the colonial era to legiti-
mize the alleged necessity of the colonial state to control and contain religion,
above all Islam. The mobilization of public opinion against “religious fanati-
cism” in the wake of the events of 9/11 is also reminiscent of this stance (van
der Veer and Munshi 2003). Called upon in contemporary debates about the
(un)desirability of a public role of religion (Islam, in particular) in the name
of the Enlightenment, this perspective is too ideological and normative to be
of help in comprehending the changing role of religion and the contests to
which this gives rise. In this sense the secular stance engenders a political posi-
tion that demands as much of scholars’ attention as the religious positions cri-
tiqued by secularists (Asad 2003).
This viewpoint also informs many scholars’ attempts to explain the rise
of so-called fundamentalist Muslim, Hindu, or Christian transnational move-
ments, which are perceived as disturbing because they assume a political role
and question the authority of the modern state to contain religion. Manuel Cas-
tells (1996, 19), for example, understood the rise of Muslim “fundamentalism”
as “a reaction against unreachable modernization (be it capitalist or socialist),
the evil consequences of globalization, and the collapse of the post-nationalist
project.” Similarly he argued that Christian American fundamentalists seek to
“reassert control over life, and over the country, in direct response to uncon-
trollable processes of globalization that are increasingly sensed in the economy
and in the media” (26). The public articulation of Islam and Christianity, for
Castells, is a defensive reaction against the insecurities arising “when the world
becomes too large to be controlled” and concerns an attempt of people to shrink
it back to a manageable size so as to ground themselves in a delimited place and
have a history (65–66).
If Castells sees fundamentalist religion as emerging in reaction against glob-
alization and the proliferation of mass media, Eickelman and Anderson (1999)
propound a different perspective. In their investigation of the emergence of a
new Muslim public sphere, they argue that the easy accessibility and prolifera-
tion of electronic media facilitates the constitution of a new Muslim public able
to challenge both the state and conventional religious authorities, build civil so-
ciety, and engage in transnational relations. Here Islam is shown to thrive and
develop not in reaction against but instead along with information technology.
To Eickelman and Anderson, the Muslim publics “that emerge around these
forms of communication [e.g., new media such as cassettes, pamphlets, and the
Internet—B.M. and A.M.] create a globalization from below” (10). Their appre-
ciation of Islam’s constructive role in the (transnational) public sphere is com-
plemented with regard to Christianity by Susan Harding (1994, 2001) in her
analysis of American Christian fundamentalists and by David Martin (2001) in
his study of global Pentecostalism. These religious groups eagerly and skillfully

Introduction 5